Chapter 121: Gains and Choices

  The True Talisman glimmered.

  An Jing did not spare it another gnce. He swiftly collected all his gear, then rummaged through the Fengdu Guard’s corpse.

  The Fengdu Guard was dead, leaving behind a considerable haul. Although the self-destructing drone’s Scarlet Fme Yang Thunder had briefly melted its outer pting, its internal framework remained intact.

  An Jing pulled the body out of the armor—much like picking snail meat out of its shell with a toothpick.

  He discovered that the wearer of the Fengdu Armor had bckened limbs, chest, and abdomen, covered with numerous sprouting tendrils akin to ‘Long-Life Greenwood.’ These tendrils were connected to the armor, presumably serving as the means of controlling the Fengdu Armor.

  Rather than calling the wearer an armored cultivator, it would be more accurate to say he was merely one component of the suit of armor.

  Time was tight, so An Jing did not carefully dismantle the Fengdu Armor. Instead, guided by the Sword Spirit, he extracted two core components from inside.

  One was a green, wooden core called the ‘Evergreen Wood Heart,’ a second-tier Foundation Establishment material. Though not rge, it contained exceptionally concentrated ‘primal life force,’ much like the Primordial Healing Talisman owned by the female cultivator from Little Ochre Mountain. It offered remarkable benefits for preserving life in critical moments or healing injuries.

  The Fengdu Guard’s powerful regenerative abilities and prolonged combat endurance were closely linked to this Evergreen Wood Heart.

  The other core was the Fengdu Armor’s energy reserve—consisting of a piece of spirit jade and a sandgss-shaped device that housed it.

  This spirit jade differed from the greenish one An Jing had previously owned. Its light patterns and core glowed with a resplendent azure hue. According to the Sword Spirit, it was a second-tier spirit stone imbued with the breath of Heaven and Earth, valued dozens or even hundreds of times higher than a first-tier spirit stone.

  However, the Sword Spirit noted that the aura within this spirit stone was not completely pure. It was likely a ‘reusable spirit stone’ that had been recharged after depletion—but even so, its spiritual energy was undeniably authentic.

  That sandgss-shaped device was likely a specialized spiritual energy furnace used to draw power from the spirit stone. Under normal circumstances, An Jing would not have been able to remove it, but perhaps due to the earlier assault by the trigram-faced ghost cultivator, its connection points had frozen and turned brittle. With the device no longer functioning, he was able to take it out.

  “With this new high-grade spiritual energy furnace, my sword case can release more flying swords!” An Jing felt a surge of delight. He had been worried about exhausting the energy in his old spiritual energy furnace just to kill this Fengdu Guard—what if he ran into a sinborn demon on his return to Huaixu? Now that concern was completely resolved, and even better than before!”

  One could only say this ghost cultivator had unwittingly aided him. If the Fengdu Guard had been able to utilize the spiritual energy in that spirit stone, not even An Jing and Bo Yan’s combined efforts would have been enough to kill him.

  From another perspective, it had required two special cultivators at the ninth yer of Qi Refining, along with An Jing’s varied arsenal and the Fengdu Guard’s moment of carelessness, to bring him down. Indeed, this killing machine of the Surveilnce Bureau was extraordinarily formidable.

  “But we must remain cautious,” the Sword Spirit said. “When crucial devices like these are stolen, they often emit a spiritual signal. Though nothing appears unusual now, if activated, it will certainly draw attention.”

  “I won’t use it in Xuanye City or even the Tianyuan Realm,” An Jing said with a small nod. He had already accounted for this possibility. After all, he was preparing to return to Huaixu. As long as he could wait until he was back and crossed the skies of the Void Sea, no hidden countermeasure would matter.

  Aside from that, there were numerous smaller but valuable items. However, An Jing’s pack was limited in capacity; for the sake of mobility, he could only take the most essential ones.

  The Sword Spirit felt quite regretful. If only An Jing had sufficient time and resources, It was confident It could rapidly enhance his capabilities, at least in regard to Immortal Cultivation.

  If only he had a Grand Void Ring right now, he could have taken all these spoils with him.

  But whatever couldn’t be carried off had to be left behind. Sometimes one had to relinquish greed and leave when the time came.

  “We’ve already gained plenty.”

  In the end, An Jing collected the True Talisman and Bo Yan’s corpse, then hurried toward the ventition duct at top speed.

  There were also numerous corpses inside the duct. That unknown ghost cultivator had killed everyone who arrived ter, except for the first group that managed to escape. An Jing pced Bo Yan’s remains—already beginning to crumble into dust—among the many fragmented corpses, then crushed and blended them all into a single mass.

  Using the female cultivator from Little Ochre Mountain’s watch, he scanned a hidden door on one side of the ventition duct. Originally quite inconspicuous, the door would have been nearly impossible to notice if not for a bloody handprint on it.

  With a sweep of the watch’s swirling patterns, the hidden door slid open. A long corridor stretched out beyond, shrouded in darkness, as though leading into the depths of hell.

  A faint stench of decay drifted out, accompanied by a soft sound of flowing water. An Jing immediately recognized this as the entrance to Xuanye City’s sewer system.

  It snaked and curved endlessly—where exactly did it lead?

  With time running out, An Jing had no chance to ponder further. Before any other Fengdu Guards arrived, he had to leave the sewer system, evade Xuanye City’s constables, find a pce with food and medicine, roughly patch up his wounds, and restore his spiritual energy. Only then could he prepare for the final showdown with the Heavenly Demon.

  He took a deep breath, stepped forward without a word, and disappeared into the darkness.

  He became a fleeting blur and vanished into the sewer.

  Xuanye City’s sewer system was massive, crisscrossing in a byrinthine network that reached far below ground, like a colossal underground maze.

  Thanks to superior design, though dark and damp, it did not accumute severe odors or marsh gas.

  The sound of flowing water drowned out An Jing’s faint footsteps as he traversed the towering, spacious network of tunnels that stretched in every direction.

  What guided him through these passageways was, in fact, the watch left behind by the female cultivator from Little Ochre Mountain.

  Having been granted access privileges, An Jing navigated quickly using the watch’s holographic map.

  Before long, he reached the sewer’s depths, a pce rarely touched by any living soul.

  “This should do… Even if someone’s after me, they won’t arrive here anytime soon.”

  In the pitch-bck darkness, where he could barely see his own hand, An Jing turned off the watch’s holographic projection and switched it to illumination mode. Squinting, he surveyed the four-way intersection before him.

  It was time for a decision.

  “According to the map, if I turn right and keep going for about half an hour, I’ll gradually ascend and exit through a sewer near an unpoputed zone.”

  An Jing communicated with the Sword Spirit mentally: “But I suspect this path won’t end well. It’s evident that Ms. Nian from Little Ochre Mountain was an undercover agent in the bck market—at the very least, an informant. Now that she’s dead, anything reted to her, including the ‘True Talisman’ she was meant to deliver, is likely being chased by the Surveilnce Bureau.”

  “I have a hunch that if I take that route, I’ll be arrested the moment I show up.”

  “Indeed.” The Sword Spirit concurred. “But if we don’t follow that path, how else will we get out?”

  “We’ll just find the nearest sewer exit and leave,” An Jing said resolutely. “Right now, the priority is to exit this section of tunnels. There are plenty of empty areas around Xuanye City, and once night comes, no one will pay any attention.”

  “We don’t need a perfect pn—we just need to escape this danger zone and avoid being tracked when we come back to the Tianyuan Realm.”

  “I also need to find a secluded spot to replenish my spiritual energy as soon as possible.”

  (End of Chapter)